


Welcome Home

by seekingsquake



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Haunted House, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Paranormal AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-11-02 03:43:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20611022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingsquake/pseuds/seekingsquake
Summary: Tony buys Bruce's old family home, and things don't turn out quite the way he expected.





	Welcome Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellewrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellewrites/gifts).

> I wrote this way back in, like, 2016 and posted it on Tumblr as a gift for my dear friend ellewrites in thanks for modding Science Bros Week. I had held off posting it here because it was supposed to be just a teaser for a larger fic, but... that fic never really took off. So, here.
> 
> This version has gone through some minor edits.

Sometimes the neighbours see the upstairs lights on, and silhouettes in the windows, even though they know that no one’s lived there for years. Decades ago, after the tragedy that went on with the first homeowners, the house had been sold a handful of times, but the people who moved in never stayed very long before leaving again. The last family to live in that house left sometime in the early nineties, and it hasn’t been occupied since.

And yet.

It’s an old neighbourhood. Most of the families that live in this area of town have been here for generations, passing their houses down to their children. Everyone knows the story of that one particular January evening, back in ‘75, and some of the older people still remember Rebecca and Brian specifically. The neighbourhood kids say that the Banner house is haunted. That the boogeyman lives there, and they tell their friends and younger siblings that if you’re bad, he’ll eat you. The adults want to do away with that sort of talk, but. Just last night there was a light on in the upstairs window.

It comes as a surprise when, one afternoon in late April, a fancy red sports car pulls into the driveway. A man in an expensive suit, sneakers, and sunglasses gets out and starts poking around the property. He makes a few calls while standing on the dilapidated front porch, and he takes a plethora of photos. Then he gets back in his car and drives away, and the only thing the neighbours think is that maybe someone is finally going to tear it down.

They’re mistaken though, because just under a month later the fancy car and man are back, and this time there’s a second man as well. And when Marie-Anne Parkinson from three houses down wanders by with her dog and sees for the first time who these people are, her heart nearly stops. It isn’t the tech genius and millionaire philanthropist Tony Stark that catches her attention, though upon later reflection she’ll feel a delayed sense of awe. It’s his companion that catches her off guard.

Little Bobby Banner, all grown up and standing on the doorstep of a home that has spawned horror stories. She was fifteen back when it happened, and sometimes, after she came home from really bad dates or got into fights with her boyfriend of the minute, she would have flashbacks of a body bag being wheeled down the Banner’s driveway through the snow, and of Mr Banner being dragged away in handcuffs, screaming about how much he had loved his wife. No one saw Bobby again after that night, but there’d been talk that he’d been adopted by one of his paternal aunts. And now here he is. At first, Marie-Anne thinks she must recognize him because he looks like his father, but that isn’t the case. As she calls out a greeting to him and he looks at her fully, she sees the guarded eyes of a woman who used to wear silk scarves all year round, and whose hands were always folded tightly together.

He says _my husband bought the family home, isn’t that a kind gesture_, and he looks at Mr Stark, and Marie-Anne feels angry and sad and incredulous and shocked all at once.

She says _I’m surprised at you, Bobby._

He says _I go by Bruce now._

She nods, and then he nods, and then she excuses herself to continue walking her dog.

They don’t move in right away. They hire a contractor who comes in and digs up the back yard, who takes down part of the ceiling and punches out almost the whole left side of the house. During the renovations, when the moon is high in the sky at night, people swear they hear screaming coming from that lot. No one speaks of it, beyond the occasional comment that _the wind has really been howling as of late, hasn’t it,_ and they pretend that they believe it’s only the construction crew when they see lights flickering on and off.

~

They hear the wind chimes tinkling away every morning, even when there’s no breeze. Tony’s keys can always be found on the table in the front foyer, no matter where he remembers last leaving them. On cold days, there’s always a scarf hung by the door. The kitchen is always warm and for some reason constantly smells like shortbread. He didn’t think that Ohio would grow on him after the bustle of LA and New York, but the reno of the house turned it into something that feels homey and _theirs_, and Tony’s never felt more comfortable in his life.

Bruce doesn’t sleep well. He’s always cold. When he’s alone he swears he hears whispers in his ear, urgent and undecipherable. If he uses the master bathroom or goes into the basement, when he tries to leave sometimes he finds that the door has somehow locked him in. He hears footsteps on the stairs when he’s the only one at home, and he finds pieces of their glass and dishware broken in the kitchen sink, even though Tony never owns up to dropping anything. The first night that Tony’s out of town on business, Bruce wakes up out of a dead sleep with a black eye and bruises down both his arms.

Jarvis, Tony’s English bulldog, will not go into the garage or the basement and growls at the doorways to those spaces whenever Bruce gets near them. Though he’s been Tony’s pet for nearly a decade, after they move into the house he more or less becomes Bruce’s shadow. He’s taken to sleeping on Bruce’s feet at night, and he growls into the darkness often enough that Bruce stays mostly awake.

It’s like they’re living in different houses.

They don’t talk about it.

~

Tony’s on a conference call with the head of the R&D unit of SI, sitting in the back of the local cafe that has become his office when he doesn’t feel like working at home, when one of the baristas approaches him with a frown. “Mr Stark,” she interrupts, holding a clunky wireless phone out to him, “It’s your neighbour, Mrs Bradshaw. She says that something’s happened with your husband.”

He hangs up his conference call hastily before accepting the cafe’s business phone. “What happened?”

“Bruce has been standing in the driveway for the past twenty minutes. He’s told me that somebody tried to kill him, but he won’t let anyone call the police.”

“Somebody broke into the house?”

“I’m not sure, but he won’t let anyone go inside. He looks like he’s been in a fight. You need to come home.”

When Tony makes it back to the house, Bruce is still standing in the drive and a group of their neighbours are huddled together on Mrs Bradshaw’s porch. He grabs Bruce by the shoulder and pulls him into a tight hug, then scowls when he gets a look at Bruce’s face. “Who did this to you? I’ll have the cops here in a hot second; tell me what happened and I’ll fix it, I swear to God.”

“I don’t think the cops can help us with this,” Bruce murmurs, and it’s obvious he’s cried at some point before Tony showed up.

“Why not?”

Bruce’s whole body shakes. “Because nobody broke in. He’s been there the whole time.”

“What– who– what are you talking about? Someone’s been living in the shed? I don’t–,”

“My father,” Bruce gasps, and there are fresh tears on his cheeks. “My father’s in the house, and he wants us gone, Tony.”

“Bruce…,” Tony says seriously, confused and suddenly very frightened, “Your father’s dead.”

“Yes,” Bruce whispers. “And he’s here.”

For the first time since moving to Dayton, Tony feels a curl of dread in his stomach. He pulls Bruce into the car, and they sit there in the driveway for upwards of an hour, talking about everything that they should have talked about in the year leading up to this moment.


End file.
